Azerbaijan's borders vigilantly guarded

Azerbaijan State Border Forces marks the anniversary of the Border Guard establishment on August 18.

Border control is one of the main guarantors of sovereignty of each country and state border forces of Azerbaijan have successfully met the challenge so far.

"The infrastructure was set up in Azerbaijan by the national leader Heydar Aliyev and his successor, Supreme Commander, President Ilham Aliyev," head of the State Border Service, Colonel-General Elchin Guliyev said in an interview with "Azerbaijan" newspaper on the 95th anniversary of the Border Guard.

"The borders of Azerbaijan are under serious control and vigilantly guarded under any conditions," he stressed.

He also pointed out that the numerous garrisons, border-crossing points and engineering structures set up along the border have increased the reliability of border protection.

Border security in mountainous areas is also among the main priorities of Azerbaijan's government.

"To this end, Azerbaijan has prepared a special program to develop the state border guard in the mountainous areas in 2014-2024," Guliyev added.

The program requires increasing the country's fighting capabilities and improving the social and living conditions of the border guards. Dynamic technological developments are also important for implementing such a program.

"As a result of recent reforms in the country, the State Border Service is improving and getting equipped with modern facilities. Its material-technical base is being upgraded. Efforts are underway to unite all these facilities into a single automated system," he said.

Guliyev said a serious work is underway to protect the borders not by physical means, but by efficient and technical means.

"Among the reforms being carried out in this field, recruiting professional staff is highly important," he added.

Speaking about border control over the Caspian Sea, Guliyev said, regular activities are held in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea for strengthening of control over the border regime and detection of poaching.

"The Coast Guard that has ships and boats, equipped with the latest radio-electronic, navigation and rescue equipment, fully ensure the protection of the state border on the Caspian Sea under any conditions," Guliyev stressed.

He added that during the activities, all catching fish means on the prohibited areas of the Caspian Sea were collected and destroyed.

"Organizing continuous protection of maritime borders and creating necessary conditions for more speedy actions in case of violations of the state border have a positive impact on the efforts to identify cases of poaching and damage to natural and biological resources. They also would increase control over border regime," he said.

"As the result of the recent efforts, the level of control over the registration of fishing, hunting, study and research, sports ships, as well as motorized, non-motorized and other swimming means, has increased," Guliyev noted.

He went on saying that 1.47 million meters of various fishing nets and 293,000 hooks prohibited for fishing on the Caspian Sea were found and eliminated during the first half of the year.